Been quiet on the blogging front for a bit, but not to worry we've just been busy on Guerrilla Gardening and some other projects. Here's a rather epic sized interview with the folks at RGBfilter that hopefully makes up for our absence. [blip.tv ?posts_id=3897684&dest=-1]

It was taped a few months ago, so I don't remember everything we talked about. I know we touched on my not-so-mysterious origin story, the Toronto indie game scene, the inspiration for Co-op Cottage Defense and Guerrilla Gardening... oh and that pesky are games art debate crops up as well.

The excellent (and totally free!) Toronto Comic Arts Festival(TCAF) is coming up this weekend. Unlike your typical comic event this one is all about independent creators and small press comic books from around the world. It's also really big for an indie media event, taking up two floors of the Toronto Reference Library (Yes the one where Knives and Ramona fight in Scott Pilgrim vol.2). Toronto's local indie games initiative The Hand Eye Society is setting up a booth at TCAF with a bunch of playable games and we're one of the participants. Here are the Spooky Squid Games @ TCAF specific details:

We've just released our entry for theGAMMA 4 One Button Games competition: The Night Balloonists. It's for 2-4 players so you'll need to grab a friend or three to play. While it wasn't one of the six winners we're pretty pleased with how it came out and have been booting it up to play a match whenever we have enough players for a three or four player match. Also Andrew's wife Maryna is thoroughly addicted and vicious with the ink shots. Download is here

This video gives a nice preview of a four player match and has the dubious bonus of including my annotated commentary discussing various aspects of the game.

We finished our game "The Night Balloonists" for the GAMMA4 competition and submitted it last night. I can't say if it'll be one of the winning selections, but Andrew and I feel we really nailed the gameplay and visual goals we set ourselves when we started so in that sense the game is already a success on a personal level. The game is a lot of fun and we've had a few really good marathon multiplayer sessions testing it with friends.
Apparently this year there were an staggering 154 entries to GAMMA (the most entries previously was something like 18) so competition will be fierce. 154 is also just a staggering number of one button games and I'm really looking forward to playing them and seeing how other teams approached the challenge. The TIGForums have a great series of threads where people have been giving cryptic sneak peeks. In the spirit of those I'm posting this little collage of images from our game:

hint: not all of these images are visible to the players

That and the image in my previus post will have to tide you over till after the GAMMA4 winners are announced and we put the game up online for general consumption.

I'm also going to be recording a making of video like we do for Guerrilla Gardening with some technical details, and discussion of design decisions when making a single button game that would be played at a large social event. Oh and we're also planning on making sure the game is compliant with one switch gaming for people with disabilities, hopefully GAMMA4 is going to lead to a whole bunch of new games for that under served community of players.

Thought I'd post a little new year's sneak peak from our work in progress Gamma 4 submission. It's all about the semi-organic art nouveau steampunk balloons.
Been a bit slow on both the twitter and blog updates lately, we're still trying to figure out balancing working on the small freeware games, the bloggy stuff and the contract work that keeps us afloat between grants. We'll get the right mix eventually I'm sure!

2009 was fantastic, full of great people, great indie games, and a lot of hard, rewarding work. Here's to another year full of strange, interesting, awesome games!

Spooky Squid Games

Carefully crafted independent games mixing old school presentation with modern design. A fine blend of super cute pixels and dark occult secrets. Creators of Night of the Cephalopods, They Bleed Pixels and others.

SPOOKY SQUID GAMESCarefully crafted independent games mixing old school presentation with modern design. A fine blend of super cute pixels and dark occult secrets. Creators of Night of the Cephalopods,They Bleed Pixels and others.